


Pastiche

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Art School, College, Eventual Levi/Erwin Smith, Falling In Love, First Dates, Light-Hearted, M/M, Modeling, Nude Modeling, Sexual Content, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi is a model for the art class Erwin is teaching this semester at the local university, and Erwin can't help but be intrigued by the dark, thick tattoos vining their way over Levi's chest in beautiful incompletion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pastiche

**Author's Note:**

> Fic commission from simmi-cosplay.tumblr.com, thanks so much! <3

Erwin took another glance at his watch. It was already half past the hour, and he could tell that his students, a mix of eager, bright-eyed freshmen and sleepy seniors trying to fulfill their last general education requirement before graduation, were getting antsy. More than a few of the latter were sipping at big stainless steel thermoses that Erwin was willing to bet didn’t all contain coffee doctored up with large amounts of cream and sugar. He could practically smell the fumes of alcohol from his position in the center of the circle of easels, tapping his foot impatiently and taking glances at his watch every other minute. The model he’d scheduled with for today hadn’t arrived yet, and hadn’t even had the courtesy to send Erwin an e-mail or a text message, both of which Erwin was quite sure were very accessible if one just took a look at the university’s directory page and typed in Erwin’s name.

He busied himself arranging and rearranging different items on the small, backlit stage the model was supposed to recline on. A can of paintbrushes went to the left of one light, feathering the bristles with fluorescent gold. A mangled puppy plushy that had seen better days took up residence on the right side of the stage, one button eye nearly ripped off and both ears floppy and drooping.

A fruit basket dropped off in Erwin’s office by some undoubtedly well-meaning and flirtatious undergraduate student took center stage, the apples and pears and bananas already starting to show signs of bruise and rot from how long it had spent neglected in the corner of Erwin’s office. He’d placed it on a chair by his office door, draped a coat over it, and had promptly forgotten about it until the art department’s receptionist called to inform him to remove all perishables from the office, as the place would be fumigated due to a sudden and unexpected fruit fly infestation. Erwin had snuck the fruit basket out of his office sheepishly, after making sure that all the other professors and volunteer undergraduate students that staffed the front desk had already gone home. He was trying to achieve tenure, after all, and he wouldn’t jeopardize his chances of doing so because of one particularly incriminating fruit basket.

One student cleared his throat, and Erwin could practically hear the sounds of their restlessness and their impatience. After all, one could hardly expect a group of thirty or so college students in the prime of their life to spend the whole of their Friday evening in a stuffy studio in the basement. The studio itself left much to be desired. Despite the university’s promises every year that they would invest more donation funds in the renovation of the art department’s buildings, the promises were empty ones and the funds had instead been allocated to tearing down and consequently rebuilding the university village and the chemistry labs, over and over again. It had become something of a long-standing joke amongst the professors and TAs that worked in the art department.

“Er, Professor Smith?” Ah yes, here it was. The single brave undergraduate who would venture out to ask if they could possibly leave yet. He turned to look.

The boy was cowed by Erwin’s fearsomely thick brows, drawn down into a scolding frown of consternation, but he tried to remain brave and cleared his throat so that it wouldn’t crack. “I was just wondering,” he began, chewing on his lower lip with a worry that betrayed his courageous appearance, “if we could possibly leave early, since the model isn’t going to be showing up?” His voice tilted up in a question, and Erwin wanted to tell him that he should try ending his sentences in periods more; it would help him appear more confident. But this particular student, Eren Jaeger if Erwin remembered correctly, was only a freshman, not yet jaded by the ways of university life, and so Erwin decided to be nice to him.

“Well, you see,” he started out kindly, “if you were to pack up your bags and leave right now, if you were to stand up and walk out that door over there, I wouldn’t be able to stop you, seeing as how you’re a legal adult already.” Eren looked almost pleased, and made to put his charcoal sticks back into his pencil case. Erwin stopped him with a tut. “But you should probably think about before you do so. Your parents, or some other well-meaning individuals from a scholarship foundation, are paying for your tuition. Now, let’s run through the breakdown, why don’t we?”

Eren swallowed roughly, cringing almost at the stern paternal tone Erwin had set. A few of the seniors he’d had in his classes before groaned good-naturedly, preparing themselves for another of Erwin’s long rants about the rising price of tuition and how it should be directly proportional to class attendance, but they managed to contain themselves as Erwin shot them a withering glare. He had no doubt that a good number of the students were ready to go out after a long week of exams and papers written hours before the due date, but if there was anything that Erwin wished to impart to the impressionable young classes of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, it was that they should see things through to the end, regardless of how boring or tedious they found it.

“So let’s say tuition is about $48,000 a semester. That’s quite a lot, now isn’t it?” Eren nodded frantically, looking as though he wished the earth would open up a sinkhole and swallow him whole on the spot. He tried to look around for any potential allies, but not even his friends on either side of him, two other freshmen by the names of Mikasa and Armin, dared glance at him, as though wishing to erase any and all affiliations. “Now let’s say your average student takes sixteen units a semester.” He was really winding up now; Erwin was quite passionate about this. “Of course, to be a full-time student, you only need to take twelve units, but let’s put that aside for the time being. Let’s say you have twenty hours of scheduled class time a week. Twenty times fifteen, since there are fifteen weeks in a semester, would make that three hundred hours of scheduled class time. 48,000 divided by 300 is $160 an hour.” Eren looked shell shocked, positively ashen, and Erwin privately congratulated himself on a job well done. “So just think about that next time you decide to skip class or leave early,” he concluded, cheerfully, and Eren nodded, cowed and ashamed.

There was a knock on the classroom door, one that rung through the studio and sent the dust motes shivering in the low light. Erwin hurried to open it, and in bustled the model he’d requested, brushing by him with a large duffel bag draped over his shoulder and without so much as an apology for being, now, forty minutes late. He headed to the low stage as though he was already familiar with the process, and set about pushing the other objects and minutiae to the sides, his nose wrinkling at the rotting fruit in the basket that he set quickly on the floor before dropping his bag with a soft thump and clambering up onto the stage.

The stage lights filtered through his plain white dress shirt, turning his skin golden with pearly luminescence, and danced across the faded threads of his jeans, pooling in the folds in the fabric. He looked at Erwin expectantly, waiting for him to tell him what pose he should be in, Erwin quickly realized, and he struggled to remember the model’s name.

Something with an L, he thought. Leonard? Luke?

The model yawned, bored, as though he hadn’t just made a room of thirty plus people wait on his arrival, and stretched languidly. The jeans creased and uncreased with his movements. Ah, Levi, Erwin thought, and once he’d gotten the name fixed firmly in his mind, he began a slow circle around the stage, wondering what posture to put the model in. He certainly looked flexible enough, his limbs lean and supple, for a variety of positions, and Erwin would definitely have to revisit it at a later date.

But for now, he simply asked Levi to relax in a reclining position, propped up on his elbows, and Levi obliged. The golden light pooled in the hollow of his throat, brushed over his collarbones, painted the contours of his face in ethereal sharpness, so much so that it almost took Erwin’s breath away as he sat down at his own easel and picked up a stick of charcoal to smooth rough shapes over the blank page. The studio went quiet, with only the occasional sounds of students clearing their throats and the soft scratchings of charcoal on paper, the gentle raspings of people smoothing out lines and picking out a concrete image.

The dress shirt Levi was wearing was made of rather thin material, and the soft film of white against his skin didn’t manage to conceal dark splotches beneath the fabric that Erwin didn’t discover until he pulled back and looked at the image he’d created. Twenty minutes had flown by like nothing, and he puzzled and fretted over the dark inky blots he had drawn on Levi’s chest, his eyes roving from the paper to Levi and back again just to make sure he was drawing true to form. He was, but as he stood up and began to make his circuit around the room to make sure his students were actively engaged in drawing Levi and not anything else (just last week he’d had to give Mr. Springer a stern talking to about drawing a penis, albeit a rather anatomically correct and lifelike one, in place of the bunch of bananas he had brought for warm-up), Erwin found that not a single student had managed to capture the same patches of dark barely appearing through the translucence of the fabric.

Erwin sighed and rubbed his eyes, thinking that perhaps it was just his age catching up to him, that he’d probably have to start wearing glasses in the near future. When he looked up again, the phosphenes dancing in his eyes, the patches of darkness remained stubbornly steadfast, stubbornly present, and Erwin couldn’t help but wonder what they were.

Bruises? his mind whispered to him, even as he tried to stifle the thought. The idea of violence, real or imagined, made him queasy, and he tried to push it away until the end of the class period.

“Time’s up. Please turn in your sketches,” he said at the end of the hour, as the clock tower in the middle of the university bonged six times. There was a mad scramble, bags unzipping, pencil bags clicking open, and the click clack of students’ shoes on the floor as they walked over to hand him their finished products, named and dated in the corners as he’d instructed them at the beginning of the course. The sketches piled up in his hands, masses of charcoal, and Erwin couldn’t help but glance surreptitiously at the chest area of each one, further dismayed with every sketch that lacked the shadings his held.

Levi stretched languidly, rolling his shoulders and pulling his shirt tight against his chest. Like that, with the fabric tight against his skin, there was no denying that there was something there other than skin. But upon closer examination, Erwin deduced that the markings were far too deliberate, far too thin and continuous, to be bruises.

This was enough to relieve him, at least in the split second of peace he had before his mind conjured up the thought that perhaps the marks were healing scars. Erwin couldn’t tell if this thought was better or worse than the first.

“You can stop staring, class is over,” Levi intoned, his voice raspy like one who’s not unfamiliar with a carton of cigarettes. He hopped off the stage, the soles of his ragged trainers whispering on the floor as he stooped to pick up his duffel bag. “Although I’m flattered by the attention.”

He started heading for the door, presumably to begin his weekend, and Erwin scrambled for something to say, anything.

“You’ll be here on time next week, won’t you?” he asked, and the instant the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back. It sounded a bit too waspish, the question a bit too snippy and accusatory, but it was all his mind supplied him with.

Levi paused. Leveled a look that Erwin couldn’t read at him. The silence stretched out between them, wire tense, until Erwin was sure that he had messed up his chances completely. After a moment, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile, much to Erwin’s surprise.

“Yeah, I will be,” Levi replied. Was that a trace of apology Erwin detected in his voice? “My bad completely. I got off at the wrong stop on the metro, and I don’t have much of a head for directions. I was lost for ages, to be honest.”

Ah. That could explain it. Los Angeles’s metro system left much to be desired, and though Erwin was practically a veteran of public transportation, he himself had gotten lost on the way to Grand Central Market for fresh fruit and organic Colombian coffee beans. He’d be willing to overlook Levi’s transgression, and informed him as such. Levi smiled in relief, and hoisted his duffel bag further up on his shoulder as he turned to leave.

Erwin watched him traipse to the double doors, opening them with a soft whoosh, letting the unseasonable cold in. Here one moment and gone the next, and by the time Erwin had retrieved his messenger bag from its place by his blank easel and headed for the doors himself, Levi had already disappeared among the mass of students milling across the quad.

***

That week, and for the following weeks afterward, Erwin was surprised to find that Levi was already waiting for him by the doors to the studio when he arrived half an hour before class, as though in an attempt to make up for his previous tardiness. Over the course of the semester, they had gotten closer and closer to each other, an interaction here, an unspoken intimacy that developed naturally between an artist and a muse. If Erwin were to ask himself when exactly Levi had hopped that border from model to muse, he wouldn’t be able to produce a clear answer.

Erwin shot him a smile as he dug in his pocket for the keys to unlock the studio, and Levi followed him inside without a word, looking grateful to be in the relative warmth of the classroom. It was the second to last class of the semester, a gloomy, rainy Friday in late November, and the corridor was a bit cold and clammy, a combination of poor ventilation and students shaking off their umbrellas all throughout the hallway instead of by the door like civilized people might have.

Erwin set his umbrella by the door, leaning against the wall. Levi wasn’t carrying his large duffel today, having swapped it out for a small leather knapsack, and the cream V-neck sweater he was wearing was cut just low enough to show off the hollow of his throat and the delicate swoops of his collarbones. His skin was flushed rosy from the cold and the rain outside, and Erwin swallowed roughly, trying to concentrate on the lesson plan for the upcoming hour instead of how gorgeous Levi looked. They’d be working on watercolors today, and Erwin wondered if any of his students would manage to capture the healthy roses in Levi’s cheeks and the brightness in his dark eyes. He wondered if he himself could replicate it, and longed for an extended hour in the hopes of even coming close to replicating Levi on his page.

“I can’t believe how hard it’s storming; skies were clear when I set out earlier. Clothes on or off?” Levi asked, arching an eyebrow at him as he padded over to the stage. Erwin paused for a moment, considering the question. Admittedly, he was rather invested in wondering exactly how far down the flush went, but he was also well aware that it was rather cold in the studio. He stalled for time, fiddling with the temperamental thermostat by the door while Levi waited patiently. Much to his surprise, after a few smacks and clanks, the furnace in the corner started to grumble and pump gusts of heat into the room.

“Off, if you don’t mind,” he said finally, turning back to where Levi was already tugging his sweater over his head. It would be the first time Levi posed undressed for the class, and for Erwin. “You can keep your undergarments on if you’d prefer, though.”

Levi shrugged. “Not a big deal to me,” he replied, peeling himself out of his shirt. His skin was creamy, large swathes of pale, unmarred skin that gleamed in the low light as he turned his back to Erwin, folding his shirt and sweater neatly before setting them to the side.

He began to unbutton and unzip his jeans, puddling dark on the floor along with his boxers. “Do you want a towel, or a robe, or something like that?” Erwin asked belatedly. Levi was already reaching in his knapsack for a towel that he wrapped around his hips before turning back to face Erwin. His eyes weren’t downcast in shame like some of the other models Erwin had had, and Erwin smiled appreciatively as his eyes trailed down from Levi’s face to linger on the dark splotches that wound wending ways over Levi’s chest.

It was a relief to know that he hadn’t been imagining things; thick dark tattoos covered the skin of Levi’s torso, save for one small blank spot over his heart. The skin there was uncovered, its paleness almost shocking against the stark blackness of the ink, and Erwin narrowed his eyes, tilting his head this way and that, trying to figure out the picture.

“Er, what is that, exactly?” he asked, with a nod to the tattoos, admitting defeat. “I can’t quite figure it out.”

Levi looked down, almost in surprise, almost as if he were discovering the tattoos for the first time as well. “It’s unfinished,” he answered, after a small pause and reaching up to place his hand over the blank spot that decorated the left side of his chest. Like that, Erwin could imagine the dark ink continuing over the back of Levi’s hand, almost the right size to complete whatever the image was supposed to be. Levi’s hand was the slightest bit too small, but Erwin thought that perhaps his own hand might be an acceptable substitute.

“Will it ever be finished?” he found himself asking, to bite back the other question that was lingering at the tip of his tongue. Can I try? No. That wouldn’t be appropriate, and he could already hear his students’ voices in the hallway.

Levi smiled, but his expression was vacant, distant, as though lost in memory. “It was finished, once,” he murmured, quietly. “But it was undone later.”

Erwin mulled Levi’s answer over in his head, considering the implications of his words. He filed the thoughts away for later as the first of his students, a quiet punctual girl by the name of Annie Leonhart, pushed into the room and made her way towards an easel.

*** 

Per Erwin’s instructions, Levi assumed a sitting position on the stage. The smooth curve of his back gleamed in the low lights as he leaned forward in a fetal position, the side of his arms cradling his knees. His dark bangs fell over his forehead, brushing over his eyebrows and feathering at his eyelids, and Erwin’s voice was almost reverential as he instructed his students to fetch a thick piece of paper and a palette of preset watercolors from the trestle tables that lined one wall of the studio.

Once each student had settled down at their respective easels, palettes and old soup cans filled with water at the ready, Erwin called for them to start, reminding them along the way to use a light hand at first, to remember the direction of their light sources, to shade accordingly. In this position, Levi’s tattoos were barely visible, could almost be passed off as shadow if one didn’t know any better, but Erwin found that he was tantalized by the idea of them. He knew they were there, and as though he could sense Erwin’s eyes searching for the trails of ink, Levi’s gaze flicked over to meet his and held it intensely. A frisson jolted electric between them, and Erwin was surprised at how fast the time flew, only alerted to the end of the hour by the ringing of the bells from the university’s clock tower to announce six o’clock.

Though he had instructed his students to do the exact opposite, Erwin found that the watercolor he himself had produced that hour was a study in negatives. Levi’s figure was defined by the shadows and background he had been juxtaposed against, and though Erwin definitely hadn’t been able to see it, the tattoos stood stark against the pale empty spaces where skin was supposed to be. His eyes burned a hole through the paper, staring back up at him, and Erwin was pleased to find that he had managed to capture the curious intensity Levi held in his gaze.

“You’re pretty good at this.” Levi’s voice rang out from behind where Erwin was cleaning up the leftover art supplies his students had carelessly put away in their rush to go out and get their evenings started. Erwin tossed a glance over his shoulder to find that Levi was examining his painting, tilting his head this way and that as though to see it from all angles possible. Levi might have been impressed, but now that he had the subject next to the render, he found it lacking in all the ways that he could not have possibly known before. It felt too dull, too bland, too plain in comparison with the real person standing with his face only a scant few inches away from the painted one. “I nearly failed out of my art GE.”

“Oh? You’re a student?” Erwin asked, rubbing at a smudge of watered blue that had found its way onto his sweater sleeve.

“Graduated already,” Levi answered. The fabric of his clothes rustled as he tugged them back on, hiding away the tattoo from view, and Erwin almost mourned the loss. “Class of 2008.”

“2008?” Erwin did a bit of quick mental math, and found that Levi was only a few years younger than himself, assuming he wasn’t some sort of child prodigy that had skipped four grades or something of the like. “Wow, I had you pegged for like, class of 2018 or something.”

Levi snorted, the smallest hint of a smile flickering around the corners of his mouth. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he murmured, turning back to the painting.

Sensing that the conversation had come to its natural ending, Erwin turned back to the trestle tables of supplies to finish cleaning up. Water rushed chilly into the old sink built into the tabletop as he rinsed off the brush bristles and cleaned out the wells of the palettes. His fingertips became stained with a rainbow of colors, blues and reds and greens fighting for space on his skin. Erwin became absorbed in rubbing the last bits of paint out of the wells on the palette boards, and almost didn’t hear Levi speaking again.

“You really know how to see the beauty in things,” Levi murmured, introspectively, still examining the painting. He had removed it neatly from the clothespins holding it to the easel, and was marveling at it, his expression one of utter adoration as though he couldn’t believe it was his image painted on the page. “I swear I don’t look half as good in real life.”

“You draw what you see,” Erwin replied, smiling at Levi’s incredulity. “Not what you know. Or something like that. Art 101.”

“You see this?” Levi asked, shaking his head in amazement as he handed over Erwin’s painting. “You see this kind of beauty in me?”

“I do,” Erwin murmured, taking the stiff paper in hand. “I hope that’s not a problem,” he said in response to Levi’s searching look.

After a moment in intense scrutiny during which Erwin didn’t dare breathe, Levi smiled. “Not at all.”

Erwin grinned in relief, and was just finishing packing up his bag when Levi tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, curiously.

“If it’s not too much of a hassle, why don’t you help me maintain my beauty and share your umbrella with me?” Levi asked, but his eyes were twinkling with sauciness. His gorgeousness took Erwin’s breath away even as he nodded assent.

*** 

“What, you don’t have an umbrella of your own? Though I guess it hardly rains in California,” he teased a few minutes later, after he’d recovered sufficiently and their footsteps were splashing over the puddles on the sidewalks as they made their way to one of the many university cafes, per Erwin’s suggestion. He had quickly discovered that Levi didn’t have any weekend plans, either, and so Erwin had taken it upon himself to invite Levi for a coffee. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was intrigued by Levi, eager to continue their before-class conversation about Levi’s tattoo, and, as though sensing this, Levi had taken him up on his offer.

The university café was all but empty, the students having all but fled the campus to the attractions downtown, and they managed to secure a table in the corner. Levi wrapped his hands around his steaming mug of chai latte, taking small sips that left a spotting of foam across his upper lip. Erwin’s mocha was hot, laced with a particularly heavy hit of chocolate dusted across the top from the barista behind the counter, and he sipped at his beverage appreciatively while he studied Levi across the table.

“So,” he said, clearing his throat. “What brings you to modeling?”

Levi shrugged. “Consider it my donation back to the school, since I don’t quite have the appropriate funds to help reconstruct the chemistry labs.” They shared a laugh at the joke.

“I had no idea this was your alma mater,” Erwin said, after he’d caught his breath. “That’s very generous of you.”

Levi smiled, his eyes bright, his cheeks flushed from the curling tendrils of steam that rose from the mouth of his cup and kissed across his skin. He looked rosy, happy, the very picture of good health, and Erwin found himself longing to reach across the table and cradle Levi’s face in his hands, stroking his thumbs over the planes of his cheekbones, tracing over the swell of Levi’s lower lip, just to make sure it was all real and wouldn’t dissolve at the slightest touch.

“What can I say? I’m a generous person,” Levi quipped back. His gaze was soft, yet steady, and Erwin found himself falling headlong.

“Would this generous, beautiful person like to accompany me to dinner and a movie?” Erwin asked, before he could lose his nerve. Levi’s eyebrows shot up in surprise before slowly settling down to their normal level, but, to his credit, he didn’t laugh or blatantly outright refuse. He pursed his lips, considering for a moment.

“Well…” He drew out the word, leaving Erwin hanging, breathless with anticipation. “I suppose I can. Especially since you already know I don’t have any weekend plans.”

“True,” Erwin agreed, trying and failing to hide his abject delight, “but I just wanted to give you an out if you didn’t feel comfortable with it.”

Levi’s smile was softer now, easier, and Erwin found his heart skipping a beat. Something dangerously close to love pounded through his chest, filtering into his bloodstream as his eyes sought out a dimple that had appeared in the pocket of Levi’s cheek. He wondered how many more little secrets and traits Levi had, wondered if Levi would allow him to ferret them out. “How could I not feel comfortable with it?” Levi asked, patting the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “You’ve already seen me naked, so I figure we’re at least on the third or fourth date now. I don’t usually get undressed before then.” Even as he said this, the uncertain D-word slipping into the air between them, Levi’s eyes darted up to glance at Erwin’s, to see if they were on the same page. They were, and the corners of Levi’s eyes crinkled in a relieved smile as Erwin nodded and reached across the table to lay his hand over Levi’s.

 ***

Erwin could barely focus on the meal in front of him at the little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant Levi had led him to, their hands laced in each other’s as though they’d been doing it all their lives. Rain still dripped listlessly down from the sky, but the biting wind had died down and the downpour was more of a mild shower instead of the tempest it had been earlier as they made their way across campus to the restaurant. Levi headed inside, the soft fluorescent lights illuminating his rosy skin and falling into golden pools in the knots of his cream sweater. Erwin shook out the wet umbrella outside before slotting it into an umbrella stand just inside the lobby, following Levi to their table quickly after, still shaking his head in disbelief at the thought that Levi might be all his.

The food and green tea the waitress deposited in front of them were all delicious, but if one had asked Erwin to recall their meal, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He was far too focused on Levi, on his delicate, slender hands handling the chopsticks, his rosy lips wrapping around bites of chicken and morsels of rice.

The movie went much the same way, and though Erwin had been looking forward to watching this particular film for quite a long while, he completely lost track of the plot and dialogue-intensive scenes, far too focused on the heat of Levi’s skin through both their layers of clothes. They had pushed up the velvet armrest between them before the previews had even ended, and Erwin cradled Levi in the crook of his arm, his arm resting softly along the set of Levi’s shoulders.

As far as first dates went, Erwin had never experienced one more comfortable, not even with his last girlfriend Marie, whom he’d once expected to marry. Levi fit him in a way that no one else ever had, and Erwin cherished every moment in the darkened theater that he could feel Levi pressed up tight against him.

The love was pure and clean, elegant and beautiful in its simplicity, and Levi returned it in spades.

 ***

The wind had returned full-force when they stepped out of the movie theater, and Levi shivered, wrapping his hands around his upper arms as he huddled next to Erwin for warmth beneath the flashing marquee display. The movie theater a block away from campus was overflowing with students trying to take advantage of their student discount, and Erwin had to bend down to speak into Levi’s ear in order to make himself heard.

“Let me take you home?” he inquired, and Levi nodded. His hair smelled like clean snow and cherries, and Erwin savored the scent even as he pulled away to the edge of the sidewalk and threw up his arm to hail a passing cab.

He tucked Levi into the cab, feathering a parting kiss that barely glanced over Levi’s lips.

“I’ll call you,” he shouted even as the cab started to pull away from the curb, and it was only then, with Levi’s face framed in the window, that Erwin realized he didn’t have Levi’s contact information.

*** 

“You’ll call me, will you?” Levi asked, smiling at Erwin after the last class of the semester. Though he’d threatened otherwise, Erwin had caved and had ended up giving all his students at least a B+ anyway. Their final portfolios were stacked thick on the trestle tables. “Though I suppose you could just dig through the university’s directories; I’m probably still in there, since the databases probably haven’t been updated in the past century. I would have done that, to call you, but I figure it’ll help my chances of you staying interested in me if I make you work for it.”

“I had good intentions,” Erwin replied, smiling as Levi strolled over, his coat still hanging open, barely clinging to his bare shoulders. The tattoo vined over his chest, disappearing beneath the swathes of fabric, and Erwin longed to run his hands over it, to feel if the inked skin was any different to the touch. “You know I did. I didn’t realize I didn’t have your number programmed into my phone until you were already on your way home.”

“I know,” Levi murmured, reaching up to loop his arms around Erwin’s neck and press a kiss to his mouth. Erwin’s arms came around automatically to wrap around Levi’s waist as he nibbled gently on the swell of Levi’s lower lip. The need and want and desire that he’d managed to suppress all week came rushing back, sudden, and Levi’s soft sighs into his mouth were affirmation enough that Levi returned the sentiment. “I have no doubt you always have the best intentions; you look like that golden boy, you know the one that all the movies talk about, the all-American boy who saves the world just in the nick of time but not without blowing up three hundred thousand dollars worth of taxpayer money in the process.”

Levi’s lips were kiss swollen, bitten to the flush, and Erwin longed to draw them, to paint them, to capture the plump rosy flesh on paper and preserve it for all eternity, but Levi was pulling on his scoop necked sweater, buttoning up his coat again and tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Erwin to finish packing up the last of the student’s portfolios. “Come on,” he wheedled, in attempts to hurry Erwin along. “Just take me home already. We can do the whole dinner and drinks slash movie things afterwards.”

“I thought you didn’t get undressed before the third date?” Erwin teased gently, smiling at Levi’s impatience. Levi rolled his eyes dramatically. It wasn’t something Erwin could hope to replicate on stiff fibers, the sparks of emotion that played across Levi’s face, and it was something that he never dared hope to replicate, to reimagine.

“Well, by my calculations, we’re already on the sixth or seventh,” Levi snipped back. “You’ve seen me naked so many minutes now.”

Erwin shrugged. “In a completely different capacity, my dear.”

 ***

The instant Erwin pushed open the door to his small apartment just a few blocks off campus, Levi was dragging him down for a searing kiss. Erwin barely managed to nudge the door shut from prying eyes before his hands were skirting beneath the hem of Levi’s sweater, rubbing circles into his heated skin. Levi shivered, fingers threading through Erwin’s hair as he raised himself on tiptoes to try and press themselves closer together. Erwin could already feel the heat of Levi’s erection pressing against him, and he nudged a thigh between Levi’s legs, reveling in the shudder that followed in response.

The kisses continued, peppered with Levi’s soft gasps and whimpers, as Erwin herded them to his bedroom. Levi fell back on the mattress with a gentle thump, and Erwin followed, his kisses trailing down the slender column of Levi’s neck, sucking soft crescents into the tender skin and feeling the vibration of Levi’s soft moans thrumming against his lips while he pushed up Levi’s sweater.

He rolled a nipple between his fingers, reveling in Levi’s sharp gasp as it hardened beneath his fingertips. His mouth latched onto the other one, sucking it to fevered oversensitivity, and he would have laughed at how Levi’s hips bucked fervently up to press against him, his legs falling open seemingly of their own accord to wrap around Erwin’s waist.

Erwin’s fingers made quick work of the button and zip of Levi’s jeans, helping him wriggle out of his pants and boxers to pool in dark puddles on the floor as Levi sat up to tug his sweater and shirt over his head. After his clothes were disposed of, he helped Erwin out of his until they both lay bare on tangled sheets.

“You should model, too,” Levi murmured, running his hands over the planes of Erwin’s skin. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

“Thanks,” Erwin murmured, drinking in the sight below him. The blush on Levi’s face trailed down his neck, already sporting scarlet circles, spreading across his inked chest. The vines, or ropes, or whatever they were, stood out stark against the flush. His cock was painted rosy, jutting from between his thighs, the head already weeping pearls and framed by short, trimmed dark curls. “Not nearly as gorgeous as you, though.”

He reached down to wrap his fingers around Levi’s cock, smiling gently at the shaky sigh that rattled through Levi’s lungs, giving him a few obligatory pumps, thumb brushing across the head and gathering sticky fluid, before he reached over to pull open his nightstand drawer and search around for a bottle of lube and a roll of condoms.

Erwin popped open the bottle of lube and slicked up his fingers as he nudged Levi’s thighs open, massaging the tight furl of muscle until it blossomed underneath his touch. He worked one finger in, two, pressing them deeply into Levi’s tight heat and rubbing against the firm nub of Levi’s prostate as Levi writhed in the sheets. Two fingers turned into three, stretching Levi out, until Erwin could no longer muster patience and sat back on his haunches to rip a foil packet open and roll a condom onto himself, slicking another blob of lube over the length of his cock before positioning himself between Levi’s spread thighs.

“Ready?” he asked, looking for confirmation, receiving back acceptance, patience, affection that consoled him and soothed him.

Levi wrapped tightly around him, like a well-made glove, and Erwin gasped as he slowly bottomed out, ecstasy nearly overwhelming him even as he tried to search Levi’s expression for any indication of discomfort or pain. He found none, and when Levi wrapped his arms around Erwin’s chest and pressed a kiss to the line of his jaw, he took it as an indication to begin moving.

His thrusts were shallow at first, eyes trained on Levi’s, gradually becoming deeper, becoming faster, until the headboard was tapping lightly against the wall and Levi’s whimpers had deepened into pleasured sobs.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Levi’s cries rang through Erwin’s ears, and as they crested their ways towards orgasm, Erwin placed his hand against Levi’s chest to feel the thudding of his heart against his palm. His hand fit perfectly in the gap where the rest of the tattoo should have been, and Erwin filed this information away for later as Levi tossed his head back with a choked sob and spurted pearls all over the sheets and their skin.

 ***

Erwin curled around Levi’s body afterwards, their skin cooling in the aftermath. Levi sighed, purring gently as he turned his head to lay a soft kiss against Erwin’s jaw.

“The university is going on hiatus for winter break,” Erwin murmured in the part of Levi’s hair, reaching down to tug the sheets over them. “And, being an art professor, I’m not exactly working on additional grading over break.”

“Is that an invitation I hear?” Levi asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile and the dimple reappearing in his cheek. Erwin kissed him softly, languidly, in the gentle comfort that existed between sex and sleep.

“Only if you’d like to,” Erwin murmured. “You might be busy with work or with whatever other things you have going on, but I figure we can use that time to get to know each other a bit more. Go on more dates. See more movies. Eat more dinners.”

“Fuck some more?” Levi asked, but a laugh was in his voice. “I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely something that I would like to suggest we spend a good part of the holiday doing. It would certainly be a hell of a way to ring in the new year.”

“Make more love,” Erwin amended. “I figure we skipped past fucking somewhere on the third date or so.”

Levi laced his fingers through Erwin’s against his chest, nodding in agreement before nodding off to dreams colored bright Technicolor with his happiness.

 ***

The three weeks that the university was on break for was filled with joy for the both of them. They quickly discovered more things about each other, enough facts to fill multiple books, and there always seemed to be more. Erwin privately hoped that the beautiful mystery that was Levi would never come to an end; he hoped to learn forever. They talked about anything and everything, from Levi’s job as a columnist for an online newspaper, to the rising prices of gasoline, to which breakfast entrée they liked better at the sandwich shop on the corner of 34th and Vermont.

Erwin spent lazy mornings waking up long before Levi, laying his palm flat against Levi’s chest and trying to see the design that he might one day complete. Levi spent lazy nights wrapped in one of Erwin’s sweaters, breathing in the scent of Erwin’s lavender laundry detergent and the musk of his skin.

They spent lazy days twined around each other, and small sentiments and three-word sentences peppered the air thick like the snowflakes they saw dancing through the movies on television. I want you. I need you. I love you.

 ***

The morning of Christmas and Levi’s birthday, Levi woke up alone. The sheets on Erwin’s side of the bed were cool to the touch, and the indent of Erwin’s head on the adjacent pillow was already fading.

A sticky note on the nightstand, when he turned to look, read ‘Be back soon. Xoxo E.’ It was drawn with a messy rendering of a heart, and Levi smiled as he set the note back on the table and let his eyes fall shut once more.

An hour later, he was awakened again by the click of Erwin’s key in the lock, and he struggled out of the depths of his dreams, sitting up just as Erwin was in the process of tiptoeing through the bedroom door. Upon seeing Levi awake, Erwin dropped the pretense, smiling instead and holding out a large bagful of gifts that Levi was sure he would protest weakly against before accepting. Erwin’s right hand was bandaged, and Levi eyed it carefully.

“What happened?” he asked cautiously. “Are you hurt?”

“It’ll hurt for a little while,” Erwin murmured, sitting down on the edge of the bed and allowing Levi to pull his bandaged hand to his lap, nodding when Levi looked up at him in askance to ask if he could unwrap the bandages. “But I think it was more than worth it.”

The back of Erwin’s hand sported a large rose, its flushed petals fading pink and red at the centers before becoming almost translucent at the edges, which were framed in the same thick dark color as Levi’s tattoo. It still throbbed red with soreness, but to his credit, Erwin barely winced as he pressed his hand against Levi’s chest, pushing aside the panels of his nightshirt to reveal bare skin.

Like this, the dark vines of Levi’s tattoos continued seamlessly to blossom into the flower that now decorated the back of Erwin’s hand, and even upside down, Levi could see that it was gorgeous. Complete, finally, the way the design had been meant to be when two collided into one.

“I figured there were a lot of ways it could go,” Erwin said, when Levi didn’t say anything, hastening, tripping over his words. “Maybe a knot, because maybe yours were ropes, but that might look like I would need to hold you together, when I’m really not; maybe a cobra’s hood, because maybe your tattoos were the coils of a snake, but that seems too vicious; but I finally settled on a rose because I thought it was –“

Levi shushed him with a kiss, placing his hand gently over Erwin’s so that they could both feel the thudding of his heart.

“It’s because you can see the beauty in me, isn’t it?” Levi asked, pulling back with a small smile. “The beauty in us. It’s complete, now.”

“Yes,” Erwin breathed, equally as relieved, his face breaking into a grin as Levi bent his head down, his bangs falling over his forehead, as he stroked his fingers lightly across the back of Erwin’s hand. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

 ***

After Levi had finished unwrapping his multitude of small presents, they traipsed to the living room with every intention of watching a Charlie Brown Christmas movie that Erwin had had stored in his DVR for ages now, just waiting for the perfect partner in crime to watch it with.

But best intentions and best-laid plans often went awry, and they collapsed on the couch in a tangle of limbs and a puddle of blankets. Erwin’s morning stubble scraped Levi’s cheeks raw as his fingers fiddled at the drawstring of Levi’s sweatpants, wriggling them down to fall limply on the floor.

With only a small, one-minute break for Erwin to all but sprint back into the bedroom for the lube and condoms, they were tangled together in record time, Levi still just as tightly wrapped around him as the first time.

Draw what you see, not what you know, but as Erwin gazed down at Levi with abject adoration, he thought that it would be particularly hard to do that in the future, if Levi were going to model for any of his other classes. He wouldn’t be able to draw Levi ever again without imagining him with roses in his cheeks and a bright sparkle in his eye, his eyebrows slightly furrowed and his lips kiss swollen as Erwin stroked him into an inferno from the inside out.

Erwin’s hand reached between them to wrap around Levi’s cock, long, firm strokes with a twist of the wrist and a thumb sweeping across the weeping head, and Levi’s moans mixed with the soft jingles of commercials on the television as Erwin’s thrusts drove him closer and closer to orgasm. The head of Erwin’s cock nudged against the nub of Levi’s prostate, and pleasure pooled heavy in the pit of Levi’s belly as he wrapped his thighs around Erwin’s waist and ground up to meet each one of Erwin’s thrusts with one of his own.

Levi whined as Erwin’s thrusts became rougher, harder, writhing beneath Erwin as Erwin leaned down to ladder more hickies up the column of Levi’s neck. “Erwin, I’m, I’m close,” he whimpered, a choked sob shredding through his lungs. “Please, kiss me,” he begged, and Erwin could hardly help but oblige.

Levi tasted like toothpaste, like gingerbread, and he was his, all his, ephemeral beauty that Erwin had finally, finally managed to capture. He was utterly gorgeous, beautiful in all the ways that Erwin could name and all the ways he couldn’t, and the face he made in orgasm had Erwin coming in thick, long spurts inside the confines of the condom. It was precious because of how fleeting it was, and Erwin’s hand pressed against Levi’s chest, a rose blossoming from the thicket of dark vines and flushed skin that bracketed it.

Draw what you see, not what you know.

Here, knowing and seeing were one and the same.


End file.
